Take Snow White for instance. We can all relate to a step-mother being jealous of the daughter when she marries a widower. The same thing happened to me when I married my second husband. His grown-up children claimed far too much of his attention for my liking. And they were spoiled—especially his daughter, who lived with us. However, I didn't go as far as hiring a hit-man to take her into Sherwood forest and kill her. And her father cooked the meals, so I had no chance to slip poison into her apple. Take another example: Cinderella. How could parents force one child to work while the others played? Well, a recent case has appeared in the Welsh court, United Kingdom. Eirian, now aged 45, took her elderly parents to court because they had told her over the years she'd inherit the thriving farm in Whitland, Dyfed, and its herd of pedigree Holstein cows.

The daughter had a 'passionate interest in pedigree milking cows'. Until the age of 21, Eirian was paid nothing at all for her work and, after that, there was a period when she was paid just £15-a-day (US $25.50) for milking the cows. At that time, she was the only sister left at the farm. Her 75-year-old father and mother, 76, insisted she had earned a fair income and was provided with free 'bed and board' and other benefits. The Cinderella-like daughter says she was left at home 'with a muck fork' whilst her teenage sisters went dancing. When she left the farm to work elsewhere, her father begged her to return. Relying on her parents' promises, she threw herself into working on the farm for low wages. For years, she labored under the impression that she was running the farm in partnership with her parents although they had never signed the agreement.

In 2009, she was shown a draft will, which left the lion's share of the farm to her. However, her parents later made changes to their bequests and proposed to place the farm in trust for the benefit of all three sisters equally. Her parents also launched proceedings to evict her. However, Lord Justice Floyd today ruled that her parents should be held to the promises they made to her. Dismissing the couple's appeal against that ruling, the judge said the daughter had received 'less than full recompense' for her contribution to the farm which could not be measured in purely financial terms. Cinderella (Eirian) has triumphed in her fight for a fair share of her elderly parents' £7m (US $11,871,500) estate. And three Appeal Court judges today ruled that a stake in the thriving 182-acre farm was no more than her due for the years of low-paid toil she put in. So, fairy tales might be based in real life occurrences, but nowadays, the law will rule against injustice.